Mechanically Augmented Agents
by Zireael07
Summary: La Guardia Airport. A turning point in three people's lives.


_La Guardia Airport_

JC made his way into the cabin of the 747, his gun at the ready. Inside the cabin, a lone NSF commander stood at the back, his hands in the air. This must be Lebedev, JC thought. Before the agent could do or say anything, the man gasped.

'I surrender!'

'What?' JC was not expecting a terrorist to surrender, none did, except maybe for the commander at the top of the statue, way back.

'Easy now, Agent. UNATCO has a policy against killing unarmed prisoners. We have much to learn from each other.'

JC Denton relaxed fractionally, and lowered his weapon. He spotted a pistol lying next to the bed, and picked it up. Better safe than sorry. Lebedev didn't even blink, standing there with his back to the wall, hands still in the air.

Footsteps made him turn. Agent Anna Navarre walked in and stood in the doorway.

'Good work. Now finish the job.' She said, her augmented eye glowing red in the low light of the cabin.

'He surrendered. He's an unarmed prisoner – UNATCO policy protects him.'

Agent Navarre didn't even blink. Well, her bionic eye couldn't, but the human one didn't, either.

'Terminate the prisoner, agent. If you are too afraid, you are ordered to return to base, on Manderley's authority. There is a helicopter waiting.'

Denton stared at her. He was completely unsurprised by Navarre's approach – he had, after all, seen her handle the situation at Castle Clinton – but to kill an unarmed man? This was against the rules! And he was not an idiot – if he left now, Navarre would simply shoot the prisoner.

'Return to base, Agent Denton. I will handle this.' Anna's tone was completely flat, but he knew very well what she meant.

He took a step forward, blocking her view of Lebedev. And did not leave the cabin – after all, Navarre still stood in the doorway. In fact, the cabin of the 747 was becoming quite cramped, with three people in it.

'You have disobeyed a direct order.' She said, after JC failed to leave the room after some seconds. 'Manderley will be disappointed in your insubordination'

'This is not insubordination!' JC insisted 'He is protected by UNATCO policy'.

Denton glanced back at Lebedev, only to see him completely passive, his face blank as they discussed his fate. And he heard the sound of a gun safety being switched off. A quick look down and to the side – the NSF man was still unarmed. He couldn't be otherwise, since JC had snatched up the only gun in the cabin. That meant… he snapped his head around to stare at Agent Navarre.

Her gun was up and pointing straight at Lebedev, and by extension JC too. Her expression was hard and uncompromising. Denton stared back, just as unyielding. They were the peacekeepers, and rules and policies were what differentiated them from the thugs and terrorists they were fighting, after all. He knew Navarre could be bloodthirsty, but there was no way she could shoot the prisoner, with him in the way. That way, the man would be getting a proper trial he deserved.

Blink. A second or two passed, and he thought he had convinced her.

Then Anna Navarre pressed the trigger. Pain exploded in JC Denton's side and he jerked, falling to the floor and dimly registering a hail of bullets tearing through the cabin. This was not really Navarre's style, she was usually almost surgical in her precision. Lebedev was down like a sack of flour, his front stained red and practically unrecognizable from the number of holes Anna just put in him.

Shit, he thought, she did it. She just executed an unarmed prisoner.

Another bullet tearing through his left shoulder brought JC out of his daze. Blink. Did some NSF grunt somehow make his way into the plane? He whipped around. Navarre advanced on him. They were the only two people left in the cabin, the only two left alive to be exact. He expected her to lash out at him, and she did so – but not with words. More bullets.

Denton ducked. It was a kill or be killed situation. The click of his own gun's safety was loud in his ears as he trained it on the other agent. And pressed the trigger. Kill or be killed.

Anna Navarre certainly did not expect him to retaliate. A bullet, and a second, and a third hit her. JC stared, feeling numb. It was one thing shooting a boogey, it was completely another shooting a fellow agent, even if it was self-defense.

Navarre swayed and paused, and he thought she must have seen reason. Then he heard her swear. And press the trigger. The bullet hit him in the leg, this time. She must be hurt, Denton thought – usually her aim was dead true. Shooting back was an automatic reaction – kill or be killed.

No more bullets coming. Dazed and hurt, JC slowly made his way over to where Agent Navarre lay on the floor, in a pool of blood. She wasn't holding her gun anymore, but he kicked it away just for good measure.

He expected Navarre to reach for it, or to apologize, but she did neither. He bent over her to check her wounds, and his hands came back red. His shock must have shown on his face. He started reaching for a medkit when Anna's mouth moved.

'Damn… idealist…' she rasped.

Denton actually felt sick. He'd already seen and heard enough men and women die to recognize it. Navarre's lips were red, but it was not the red of her lipstick. The medkit would be futile, and it would just prolong her agony, so he dropped it.

'I'm sorry' he said, bending low over her.

For a moment, he doubted whether she could actually hear him, but then she nodded jerkily, acknowledging his words. He started straightening back up, but a wave of dizziness hit him as the change of perspective brought home the full extent of Navarre's wounds. She was indeed beyond saving, her lifeblood slowly trickling to pool on the plane's floor. As he watched numbly, her skin grew more and more pale. He was seeing a workmate die. Only a short time into his active duty and it was already happening. He squeezed her shoulder, feeling terrible – and forgetting for a moment about the fact that he was the one to have put the holes in her, about Paul, about everything…

Navarre did not speak, but he thought he saw gratitude in her steel gray eye. They stayed like that for a long time and then he thought he felt her hand move feebly. Her mouth moved and she clearly tried to articulate something. One more word, or maybe a name? JC brought his head closer, trying to catch it – but it was too garbled for him to understand.

The next moment, Anna went limp against him. She was gone.

 _NYC, unspecified location_

JC stared numbly at the coffin draped with the American flag, still unable to believe that it really held Anna Navarre – or what was left of her. He'd returned to the headquarters still in a state of shock – gave Manderley a brief report which amounted to 'I don't know what happened, a shooting, a surprise attack' – which was technically true. And now it was two days later, and all the personnel was gathered here for the funeral of Agent Anna Navarre.

The funeral of Agent Anna Navarre… a sentence no one present ever thought he'd hear. There was a rather… big… absence though, as JC looked around. He'd believed everyone would come, but a single person was missing. Whispers floated up to him.

'… Hermann not attending… in no state to…'

The sick feeling returned. Navarre and Hermann, Hermann and Navarre. They had been working at UNATCO for years and have been assigned to each other for most of the time, naturally – both being mechanically augmented, they complemented each other perfectly. Navarre, cloaked and deadly precise, Hermann, a wall of muscle and armor. Perfectly professional, unfeeling machines to fulfill every mission thrown at them. Until now.

JC swallowed, feeling… something… clogging up his throat. From the way the jaws and throats of men around him worked, he wasn't the only one to be affected. Was it grief?

The coffin was slowly lowered into the earth, and the crowd dispersed. Denton stared at the fresh grave, feeling the guilt rise again. He was the only one to know what really happened on the 747, and as he stared, he thought he heard a whisper of Anna's voice again. The movement of her lips, the sound she'd made just before she died.

What were you trying to say, he wondered, as Anna Navarre's final moments haunted him.

 _Paris, Templar Cathedral_

Several weeks have passed since Agent Anna Navarre's death. Several weeks which turned JC Denton's life upside down. Suffice it to say, he was no longer a UNATCO operative, and the events have largely robbed him of the idealism he'd had back then…

His infolink pinged. Who could it be, he wondered for a moment, before a familiar face floated into his vision.

'Yes. Obey your new masters. Come to me'

A mostly useless attempt at intimidation from a man who had once been an ally, a workmate. And only one flight of stairs from the place Denton was standing in. He made his way down, feeling his heart hammer. Agent Gunther Hermann had been hounding him for weeks, but always a step behind. Now, they were going to meet again, face to face.

'You are a small, prowling mouse. And dumb like a mouse. You keep coming, like you forget about Agent Navarre. I remember Agent Navarre. I remember for everyone.' Gunther's words from an earlier communication floated into his mind. Navarre and Navarre. Back when he was at UNATCO, people would often remark on Hermann's staunch loyalty to the other mech-aug. Some would even compare him to a dog, to which those with a slightly better sense of humor said, he's her Rottweiler. It was weeks since she died, but apparently it didn't matter.

A familiar towering figure was waiting for JC behind one of the pillars.

'I regret that only once we worked together. Now you see that you cannot succeed all alone against the whole world.' Said Hermann's voice, thick with his German accent.

'You came all the way to Paris to tell me that?'

'It is a simple message I am demonstrating. We know where you are going and what you intend.'

'And I know something about you' Denton said, slowly coming to a realization.

'You know you will be defeated'

'I know you hate being a tool for a bunch of bureaucrats as much as I did. How 'bout we make a gentlemen's agreement?'

'I am the top agent at UNATCO. It is different now. Mr Simons said if I defeat you I can have any upgrades you want. THAT is a gentlemen's agreement.'

Gunther's augmented eyes gleamed a dull red in their clunky sockets. They always made it hard to read his emotions, but the expression of utter fury was not a difficult one to read.

JC dodged behind a pillar, as a jet of flame missed him by inches. He'd expected Gunther to tote a pistol, or maybe a machine gun, not a flamethrower. He'd hoped to appeal to his honor, but that didn't work, and a flamethrower meant that there was no hope of solving the situation without violence, not if he wanted to survive. One way or other, one of them would die.

Denton emerged from behind the pillar, an auto shotgun in hand and aimed at his former colleague without hesitation. He squeezed the trigger. For an instant, he was eerily reminded of Anna Navarre's death, but Hermann took an entire clip without flinching. A walking tank, some once said. Fortunately, serving together once meant JC knew where the unplated portions of this particular mech-aug were. He waited for him to get close enough – flames ignited his legs and arms, but were reduced to almost ineffectiveness by Denton's nanoaugmentations. He felt some pain, but not enough to incapacitate him, and lifted the gun to point it at the side of his opponent's head. The recoil meant most of the bullets missed, but at least one hit, as evidenced by Gunther's grunt of pain.

His size was a disadvantage now, as it took some time for him to turn around while JC kept emptying clip after clip into him. Most of the bullets were ineffective, hitting the subdermal ballistic armor, but some did deal damage, flesh wounds blooming red all over Agent Gunther Hermann's huge body. The flamethrower spewed fire, but JC kept getting closer, so Hermann dropped the unwieldy weapon and pulled out a pistol.

The bullet missed Denton's head by a hair as he ducked. The movement meant his burst of fire mostly missed. He dropped the shotgun in favor of a pistol and rolled to avoid the return fire. He had an advantage over the German as long as he kept moving, ducking behind a pillar and weaving. When he had a moment's opening, he shot. Bullet after bullet went into the UNATCO agent, but he kept shooting.

Until a moment when he did not. JC breathed in as he registered the absence of return fire. Gunther clutched his right shoulder with his left hand, blood trickling between the large fingers. As Denton approached, he attempted to fire, but the pistol only clicked. The chamber was empty – and then Denton calmly proceeded to pump him full of lead.

Gunther Hermann's large form slowly folded and he slid down to the floor, the gun falling from numb fingers. Blood and metal sprayed around painted a very grim picture of his chances of survival, but JC kept his gun still trained at the agent's head.

'I'm sorry' he found himself saying, even though they were now enemies, he could not forget the past, the better times, the weeks spent under Gunther's command in training.

Hermann only grunted. JC kicked away the gun and stared at him, feeling vaguely upset. Killing largely unfamiliar UNATCO troops was a completely different situation to killing someone he actually used to know and work with. He slowly realized that the pool of blood was becoming bigger and bigger – the other man was bleeding out and considering how little of him was actually human, it would not be long before he died. At least, his agony would probably be shorter than Navarre's.

Denton was startled when he noticed Hermann's lips curving into a smile. Not his usual cutting smirk, a smile. He looked around warily. One last nasty surprise? That would be his style… but no, the hall was empty of both men and weapons. A sound made him turn his attention back to the older man, only to see that Gunther was no longer looking at him, but instead at some point away.

His white, bloodless lips moved and JC was hit with a powerful feeling of déjà vu – he knew it was the end for Gunther Hermann. And unlike Navarre, the word he uttered was crystal clear.

'Anna…' said Gunther, and he died with a smile on his lips.

And Denton felt an urge to retch as everything suddenly clicked into place. Navarre's final moments kept haunting him for the whole time, and he couldn't figure the word out. But the sound that Anna Navarre had made wasn't a word.

It was a name.

 _Gunther._

A/N:

I wanted to write a pacifist (or at least not overly violent) JC Denton who attempts to stick to the idea as long as possible, and also has some actual feelings (after all, canon only says he can't smile, so all the other feelings should be fair game).

And I wanted to write a shippy fic while keeping as close to the canon as possible. I only really changed one thing, no more 'ludicrous gibs' when mech-augs are killed. I added the funeral scene because honestly, the UNATCO troops are serving soldiers and they deserve them.


End file.
